My dear friend, in the body I am at Nazareth but in spirit I have been at Bethlehem for the last month. As I write to you I feel as though I am with Mary and Joseph beside the Crib. It is good to be there. Outside are the cold and the snow, images of the world, but in the little cave, lit by the light of Jesus, it is sweet and warm and light. Father Abbot asks me what it is the Divine Child whispers to me all this month as I watch at his feet at night between his holy parents, when he comes into my arms and enters into my heart in Holy Communion. He says over and over again, ‘The will of God, the will of God. Behold I come.’ In the beginning of the book of life it is written that I should do thy will. The will of God and the will of God through obedience, this is what the beloved voice of the Divine Child gently murmurs to me.

– Blessed Charles de Foucauld

Most of us in the world today live far from Jesus Christ, the incarnate God who came to dwell among us. We live our lives by philosophies amid worldly affairs and occupations that totally absorb us and are a great distance from the manger. In all kinds of ways, God has to prod us and reach out to us again and again so that we can manage to escape from the muddle of our thoughts and activities and discover the way that leads to Him. But a path exists for all of us. The Lord provides everyone with tailor-made signals. He calls each one of us so that we too can say, ‘Come on, let us go over to Bethlehem, to the God who has come to meet us.’ Yes, indeed. God has set out towards us. Left to ourselves we could not reach him. The path is too much for our strength. But God has come down. He comes towards us. He has traveled the longer part of the journey. Now he invites us: ‘Come and see how much I love you. Come and see that I am here.’ –– Pope Benedict XVI

You must do like the shepherds when they stay in the fields during winter. Life is a very long winter. The shepherds make a fire, but from time to time they hurry off to pick up some more wood to keep it going. If only we knew, like the shepherds, how to keep up the fire of the love of God in our hearts, by prayer and by good works.

– St. John Vianney

Somehow I realized that songs, music, good feelings, beautiful liturgies, nice presents, big dinners, and many sweet words do not make Christmas. Christmas is saying ‘yes’ to something beyond all emotions and feelings. Christmas is saying ‘yes” to a hope based on God’s initiative, which has nothing to do with what I think or feel. Christmas is believing that the salvation of the world is God’s work and not mine. Things will never look just right or feel just right. If they did, someone would be lying’¦.But it is into this broken world that a child is born who is called Son of the Most High, Prince of Peace, Savior.

– Henri Nouwen

St. Paul had a great and broad vision; he saw God’s plan from its beginning to its fulfillment. In one of his resounding sentences he wrote:But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law. In the same vein, Paul assures us that Christ died at the appointed time. What do we mean by appointed time? . . .Only the Lord of history, who sees all of history at once, could fix the appointed time. This truth of our faith should be deeply consoling. We are not adrift on a boundless sea of yesterdays and tomorrows; God has fitted us into his great plan . . . If Christ is the beginning and the end, then he embraces us and our lives, and our short days are taken up into his endless time.

– Father Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J.

When for one reason or another, we contemplate the reality of death, it is not uncommon that we begin to think about the sin and failure in our past. And, for many, this thought can be a cause of great unhappiness and even despair. After all, the past is past, we are told; it can never be recovered; the chance of grace is gone. But when we pray the Hail Mary, there is contained in one small word an entirely different message, and one which can, in itself, completely transform our thinking and transform our lives. It is the word ‘now.’ ‘Pray for us now.’ What Mary discovered, deep in her being at the Annunciation, was that nothing was impossible to God. In a single moment, in an instant of grace, everything can be changed. And this, of course, is true, or can be true, for each one of us’¦In our lives, we can say that there are only two moments that are of supreme importance: the moment of our death, and this moment now, the present moment. Part of the greatness of the Hail Mary is that it contains, and contains together in one breath, as it were, both of these moments: Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

– Father Paul Murray, O.P.

In all trouble, you should seek God. . . .God can only relieve your troubles if you in your anxiety cling to Him. Trouble should not really be thought of as this incident or that in particular, for our whole life on earth involves trouble; and through the troubles of our earthly pilgrimage we find God.

– Saint Augustine

The promised land, brimming with delights, is a scriptural metaphor for God himself and for the transfigured existence of man with God. God draws us through the desert of this life, to himself. He stands at the far side of the desert experience, as the risen Jesus stood in the dawn light on the shore of the sea of Tiberias (John 21: 4). Like the disciples in the boat, we toil in the waves of a sea of desert sand, trying to reach the shore of that good country where the risen Lord calls us to come to eat of his meal and never be empty again. Slowly the disciples made their way to Jesus, and perhaps the way seemed arduous to them at times, but actually ‘they were not far from the shore’ (John 21:8).
–Father Charles Cummings OCSO

You who are beyond time, Lord, you know what you are doing. You make no mistakes in your distribution of time to men. . .But we must not lose time, waste time, or kill time, for time is a gift that you give us. . .The time that you give me, the years of my life, the days of my years, the hours of my days, they are mine to fill and to offer to you. I am not asking you Lord for time to do this and then that, but your grace to do conscientiously, in the time that you have given me, what you want me to do.

– Father Michel Quoist

We have a God who is infinitely gracious and knows all our wants. I always thought that he would reduce you to extremity. He will come in his own time, and when you least expect it. Hope in him more than ever; thank him with me for the favors he does you . . . I do not advise you to use a multiplicity of words in prayer; many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before God like a poor, paralytic beggar at a rich man’s gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the Lord . . .One way to recall the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquility, is not to let it wander too far at other times. You should keep it strictly in the presence of God.

– Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection